As we try to wean ourselves away from pump and burn fuels, we seem to be moving to grow and burn fuels, either directly as biomass combustion or converted to ethanol or the like for use in cars/suvs/trucks.
But the grow and burn route competes directly with our food supply as land and plants are required for both. I’m sure the farmers could use a boost by having more options as to what to grow and where to sell, but this could get out of hand, as the price for fuel and food become interdependent, and people at the low end won’t be able to afford to eat, no less drive.
Some might say that some lands can’t support food crops and with advancing technology it is possible to use that land for fuel, but we already have a way to convert that type of land to food - it’s called a cow.
I’m not predicting this outcome, but see it as possible.
Currently we (the USA) have the fattest poor people in the history of civilization. Subsistence level food is dirt cheap.
Financially, housing, heating and cooling are far more of an issue than eating. I know people die every year from hypothermia and heat stroke due to being homeless or too poor to afford AC/heating oil. I do not know of any cases of income related starvation.
Not to say it won’t ever become an issue, but we’ve got a ways to go before we really need to worry about it.
This recent study from Cornell analyzed the amount of fossil fuel required to grow the biomass (including fuel for tractors, fertilizer, etc.) and concluded that:
I wonder if hydrogen cars are the real future of cars and not biofuels. This doesn’t mean that there is no place for biofuel. It may still be used for power generation or other non-automotive uses. But it’s not yet determined which system will be the successor to current car engines. And that’s assuming that one of them actually will be the next technology. I’ve heard the the auto industry is gearing up for hydrogen power. I can see why. Hydrogen engines and fuel cells are (on the surface) cleaner than biofuels. The “on the surface” refers to the hidden pollution generated by the power stations needed to build the enginess hydrogen or fuel cells. Personally, I’d like to see a diversity of power sources, such as wind, solar, tidal, and biofuel used to create hydrogen power. That way, hydrogen becomes a “common currency” generated by many means but usable anywhere.
We also have some of the richest poor people, with radios, TV’s, cars, name brand sneakers, cable service. But this is now, if food and fuel do become truely interdependant in the future these people might have to live off that fat, or have it sucked out of them to sell as biofuel (ok a bit overboard).
Just like we’ve got a ways to go before we run out of cheap oil - so we don’t really need to worry about that either. I don’t see the widescale conversion from food to crops happening very soon, but could see it happening.
Just a comment on those numbers ratatoskK showing that it takes more energy to create biofuel then you get from it - that study only applies to the conversion to liquid fuels, direct burning of biomass is a net positive - from your cite:
Perhaps flex fuels. I think we really have to look at where the power is comming from - that will determine how we will store it. If we go the nuke (fusion?) route and beef up our electric capacity then I could even see the return of the electric car and some sort of grid system where cars could tap into the grid while traveling to recharge solving the range problem - though the manufacture of some sort of liquid fuel seems more likely.
There’s not really a shortage of areable land in the US. Farmers have been selling it off for subdivisions of McHouses because there’s no money in farming anymore for the Litte Guy, but if the demand for corn goes up, that could change.
Beef prices may go up, as could prices of corn-based foods, but there are plenty of other sources of food. I can’t imagine, though, if more farmers got back into the game, that there would be real shortages or that food would go beyond the means of most. There are subsidies for that, after all.
What concerns me is water consumption and the increased use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
At least with oil there is a current trend of it becoming more expensive and scarce and it’s an inherently limited resource. Food is going the other way, less expensive and more plentiful and is renewable.
Sure, keep an eye on the trend, but I wouldn’t start being “concerned” until food actually stops getting cheaper and cheaper.
Except we don’t have any problem with house heating. We currently have enough coal reserves last several hundred years. The only avantage to burning biofuels would be CO2 reduction.
People seem to have a difficult time grasping the difference between an energy source and a fuel. A fuel is a highly concentrated, portable form of energy. We have plenty of energy, but we are running out of fuel. Oil is both a energy source AND a fuel but it is used primarily as a fuel. Hydrogen is a fuel but NOT an energy source. biofuel is a fuel but NOT an energy source. biomass is an energy source but NOT a fuel.
I personally think the solution is to genetically engineer the poor so that they can run directly off biofuels, without wasting resources on any of that food nonsense.
